Jane McKay

Jane Mckay Gallery

Also known as – Patrina Sargent

Although details of Jane McKay are few and far between (apart from the fact that she was originally from Scotland, worked as a shorthand typist in the City and lived in Kent – or possibly a hairdresser from Bristol who “models for the fun of it” – and was an amateur pop singer), she occupies a unique place in the history of ToCo.

As explained in the history section, the publishers campaigned for readers to submit photos of wives and girlfriends for hopeful models. From that campaign, of course, the seeds of the magazine Beautiful Britons were sown. Beautiful is pushing it a bit (with a few exceptions, pretty would be a more appropriate adjective, though you would lose the alliteration), as is Britons (many of the girls came from foreign climes) – and the amateur status of many of the models is questionable.

But take a look at this reader’s letter, and its response, from Spick 73 in December 1959:

“I am writing to introduce you to my sister Jane, who I think is very sweet and who has the kind of personality to make life gay for everyone who knows her. I am enclosing two photographs of her and do hope you can feature her.

SHELLEY McKay,

Erith,

Well, we met Jane, and just as Shelly said, we found her very sweet and very charming. Look out for photographs of her in due course.

So Jane is the first arrival to the ToCo stables as a result of their recruiting campaign.

One of the many frustrations in trying to compile this catalogue is that ToCo made so many absurd mistakes – from putting the wrong publication date on the title page to getting the name of the model wrong. And two months before that letter of introduction was published, Jane appeared in Funfare 22, which makes that her debut magazine – she appeared before she was even ‘invented’. Time is indeed a strange dimension.